to Islam that
the story is told of a Moorish girl in the clutch of the soldiers,
who, when the restored King of Tunis sought to save her, spat in his
face; anything was better than the dishonour of his protection. Hasan
pretended to reign for five years, but the country was in arms, holy
Kayraw[=a]n would have nothing to say to a governor who owed his
throne to infidel ravishers; Imperial troops in vain sought to keep
him there; Doria himself succeeded only for a brief while in reducing
the coast towns to the wretched prince's authority; and in 1540 Hasan
was imprisoned and blinded by his son Ham[=i]d, and none can pity him.
The coast was in the possession of the Corsairs, and, as we shall see,
even the Spaniards were forced ere long to abandon the Goletta.

Nevertheless, the expedition to Tunis was a feat of which Europe was
proud. Charles V. seldom suffered from depreciation of his exploits,
and, as Morgan quaintly says, "I have never met with that Spaniard in
my whole life, who, I am persuaded, would not have bestowed on me at
least forty _Boto a Christo's_, had I pretended to assert Charles V.
not to have held this whole universal globe in a string for
four-and-twenty hours; and _then it broke_: though none had ever the
good nature or manners to inform or correct my ignorance in genuine
history, by letting me into the secret when that critical and slippery
period of time was."[32] Naturally admirers so thoroughgoing made the
most of the conquest of Tunis, the reduction of the formidable
Goletta, the release of thousands of Christian captives, and, above
all, the discomfiture of that scourge of Christendom, Barbarossa
himself. Poets sang of it, a painter-in-ordinary depicted the siege, a
potter at Urbino burnt the scene into his vase; all Europe was agog
with enthusiasm at the feat. Charles posed as a crusader and a
knight-errant, and commemorated his gallant deeds and those of his
gentlemen by creating a new order of chivalry, the Cross of Tunis,
with the motto "Barbaria," of which however we hear no more.
Altogether "it was a famous victory."

The joy of triumph was sadly marred by the doings of Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n.
That incorrigible pirate, aware that no one would suspect that he
could be roving while Charles was besieging his new kingdom, took
occasion to slip over to Minorca with his twenty-seven remaining
galleots; and there, flying Spanish and other false colours, deceived
the islanders into the belief that his